Film Review: Blue Valentine

About Blue Valentine (2010)Blue Valentine is an intimate, shattering portrait of a disintegrating marriage.

On the far side of a once-passionate romance, Cindy (Michelle Williams) and Dean (Ryan Gosling) are married with a young daughter. Hoping to save their marriage, they steal away to a theme hotel. We then encounter them years earlier, when they met and fell in love—full of life and hope.

Moving fluidly between these two time periods, Blue Valentine unfolds like a cinematic duet whose refrain asks, where did their love go?

Starring: Michelle Williams, Ryan Gosling

Directed by: Derek Cianfrance

Runtime: 114 minutes

Studio: Anchor Bay

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Review: Blue Valentine 

Derek Cianfrance’s Blue Valentine is both a romance and a drama, depicting the lives of Dean Pereira (Ryan Gosling) and Cynthia Heller (Michelle Williams) at different points in their lives. In the present they are married, have a daughter but all is not well. Cynthia is a nurse while Dean is a painter. He has a better relationship with his daughter than with his wife and the cracks in their marriage are clear to see. Trying to inject some romance back into their lives, Dean takes Cynthia away to a hotel for the weekend. Intersposed with this narrative are events from six years earlier when Dean and Cynthia first met and how they came to be together.

Blue Valentine contrasts the changing state of Dean and Cynthia’s relationship well. When they first meet Dean is working for a moving company while Cynthia is at college. She has an uncomfortable home life with her parents arguing and when she isn’t at college she visits her grandmother and cares for her. Cynthia is in a relationship with Bobby (Mike Vogel) at the outset and suffice to say his primary concern seems to be getting her into bed. It’s a fragile relationship at the best of times and when Cynthia meets Dean they grow fond of one another much to Bobby’s annoyance. In the present, the romance has died. Dean is a good father to their daughter but Cynthia is frustrated with his lack of ambition even though he insists he is happy. Will their marriage survive or is it the end of the line for the couple?

Blue Valentine has two good central performances from Gosling and Williams. The contrast between when they meet and just six years later is staggering. They are two completely different people and appear to have aged more than six years, such is the strain upon them and their marriage. Although I had no issue with the performances I didn’t find myself caring about the couple as much as I might have done. Given the sacrifices Dean makes, Cynthia seems a bit unreasonable but then again his descent into drinking is a big catalyst in their faltering marriage. The conclusion is somewhat open-ended which may be fine for some but I felt the film seemed a little unfinished, as if something key was missing. When Cynthia bumps into Bobby in the present, there is a hint that this could be an important development in the story but it doesn’t lead to anything substantial.

Blue Valentine is a well-acted and tragic love story. It conveys well the dreams and hopes we have in our youth but hits hard in emphasising just how quickly a seemingly perfect idyll can deteriorate into domestic hell. Dean and Cynthia have something special at one point in the film but Blue Valentine injects a heavy dose of realism in reminding us that we don’t all have the luxury of a happy ending.

Verdict: 3/5

(Film source: reviewer’s own copy)

Film Review: Blue Valentine | Thank you for reading Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dave